


You're Left Only on your Own

by Romana_queen_of_space



Category: Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Angst, Angst without plot, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, It's just Glinda being sad, author is a big gelphie shipper so it was written with romantic love in mind, but glinda doesn't know that, but it isn't said explicitly so it could be read as friendship i guess, only she isn't actually dead, seriously, so for the purposes of this fic she may as well be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 12:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romana_queen_of_space/pseuds/Romana_queen_of_space
Summary: Through the celebrations of the death of the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda the Good secretly morns the loss of her best friend.





	You're Left Only on your Own

**Author's Note:**

> I finished this ages ago, and started it much much longer ago, but didn't get round to posting it until now.
> 
> I actually kinda hate some of it. At the beginning I tried to translate 'no one moans the wicked' into normal speaking, which I feel came out really cringey sometimes, but the rest of it's no so bad, so please just try and forgive it.

“Look! It’s Glinda!”

 

Glinda smiled around her at the crowd on the worst day of her life.

 

“It’s good to see me isn’t it? No need to answer, that was rhetorical,” she told them as she carefully brought her bubble down closer. She briefly wondered how much longer it would work. Morrible had spelled it to do her bidding many years ago. She wonders if it was the sort of spell that was out of your hands once cast, or if it could be disabled if the person you made it for locked you in prison....

 

Never mind that now, she had more important matters to attend to. The people were crowding around her, joy on their faces and songs in their hearts- and in many cases on their lips. They all wanted to share their joy with her. She forced her smiled, that had drooped, firmly back into place. It wasn’t their fault, they couldn’t know all she wanted to do was cry.

 

“Fellow Ozians,” Glinda addressed the crowd as they hung off her every word- “let us all rejoicify that despite the hardship of these past months, goodness won out, as in our hearts we always knew it would.”

 

The crowd cheered and some shouts went up celebrating the demise of the wicked witches of the east and west, but in her head Glinda thought of the wizard and Morrible. They took so much from so many but now their reign was over. Morrible would rot in prison and the wizard was far away some where over the rainbow. That was goodness winning out, if only the price hadn’t been so terrible...

 

“Today we celebrate this victory,” she said carefully and was impressed the words sounded normal out loud despite feeling like sand in her mouth, “knowing that from this day forth, we shall live our lives safe from the wicked workings of you know who.”

 

She didn’t feel ready to insult the memory of her friend by using the cruel title that was forced upon her to bring her down. She new she’s have to in a moment, but the words were still catching in her throat.

 

“It is thanks to all of your unwavering braverism and positivity in the face of terror that this happy day could come to pass,” she continued on with the vague speech of hope and benevolence that it had become her job to give the last few years, though she now wonders where along the way she stopped believing in them herself. It certainly rings hollow now. “As long as we continue to hold those values in our hearts Goodness will always triumph over evil and that is a truth as old as Oz itself. A truth in witch we all believed, but is it not nice to finally see the proof first hand? Now we know no lie shall outlive it, for you or-“

 

“Glinda!” one of the Ozains near her shouted. It would seem they were getting a bit bored of her meaning less preaching. She inclined her head towards him to show she was listening. “Exactly how dead is she?” he shouted up to her.

 

Glinda sucked in a breath. Images flashed before her eyes. Hiding in a small back room, the faint orange glow of many moving torches gleaming through the door way, the shouts of the angry mob, shadows reflecting and mixing on the back wall of her hiding place, a horrible scream...

 

She shook her head, she couldn’t lose it, not here with all these people looking to her. She smiled around at all the people awaiting her answer. She head her head up high and said in the most detached and professional way she could, “as there has been so much rumour and speculation, innuendo, outuendo, allow me to set the record the record straight. According to the time dragon clock, the melting occurred at the 13th hour. The direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a human child.” She took another deep breath before continuing. “Yes. The wicked witch of the west... is dead!”

 

Cheers went up all around her.

 

“No one morns the wicked!” Someone shouted. Others joined in “No one will lay a lily on _her_ grave!”, “Goodness scorns the wicked!”

 

 

Glinda told herself not to cry. Then she saw people looking expectedly at her and realised with horror they expected her to join them in their “celebration”.

 

“The wicked are as punished in life as in death,” she told them “the wicked live alone, and then they die alone. That’s what happens when you fall down the path of wickedness.”

 

‘She didn’t have to be’ a small voice whispered in the back of her head, ‘not for all of it.’

 

The villagers seems to take her words and roll with it. “The wicked life is lonely!” “The wicked cry alone!” “The wicked reap what they sow!” “The wicked die alone!” “The wicked die alone!”

 

“She died alone,” Glinda said in some kind of slick punishment to herself, like the pain of the words is penitence for her failing. It’s not.

 

‘Just keep smiling’ she told herself.

 

Glinda closed her eyes- just for a moment- and tried to block out the world.

 

Xxx

 

It was nearly light when Glinda finally returned to her room. Regime changes take a lot of time and planning, and she still has so much to do. But she had managed to excuses herself for the night, claiming extortion, which was not technically untrue as she had not slept since the night before last, and even then not well, but she had no intention of trying to sleep, she did not think she could. In any matter she had other things she had to attend to first.

 

With a bit of fumbling she undid the clasps at the back of her dress, heaps of puffy blue material pulled on the floor so she stood in just her shift, she looked down at her dress numbly. She remembered putting it on yesterday morning... or technically the day before yesterday , she remembered how she had thought she must dress exceptionally beautiful to show that she would not be brought down by being betrayal and abandoned by her once fiancé. The irony was that beneath the surface, the dress itself had been physically trying to bring her down, the thing weighed 40 pounds, and it had been laying heavy on her form as a bad morning turned into a tragic afternoon, turned into terrible day, turned into the worst night of her life.

 

She finally let out an angry scream and leapt at the offending garment with a furry, tarring at the light blue sequin covered silk. The dress was just too pretty and cheerful to have been with her today. It should have darkened, lost some of its shimmer and puff as one by one three people she cared about were lost to this cruel cruel world.

 

She sat up, staring at the mess she’d made and slowly let her erratic breathing return to something like normal. She stood up tiredly, disentangled her tiara from her hair and laid it on her vanity and then rummaged though some boxes in a cupboard till she found one of her old dresses from back before she was Glinda The Good and slipped it on. It was cream, knee length and much less conspicuous than the things she wears everyday now. A bit more rummaging found a pink hooded coat which she also put on. Then she went and opened the glass doors leading onto her balcony, she looked around carefully to see no one was watching, then summoned her bubble and floated away.

 

Xxx

 

Half a hour later she lands in a quiet field quite far from the city. it’s hilly, used for animal grassing and has clusters of trees here and there. She makes her way over to one such cluster and looks around. The sun is shining above the horizon now, casting a picturesque golden glow over the landscape. She nods to herself. This will do fine.

 

With that Glinda got about getting her hands dirty. She found three rocks, roughly two feet across. She dragged each to the tree cluster and lay them carefully down.

 

She crouched in front of all the first stone.

 

Glinda has never excelled at magic, or even really passed at it, but she had a feeling she could do this now.

 

She held out her hand and let energy seep from it, braking away at the stone to form distinct shapes.

 

N. T.

 

Nessarose. She couldn’t write the full name. If someone found the grave of the Wicked Witch of the East they would surely destroy it. Maybe they would even be justified in doing so. Nessa had been a friend to her just after Elphaba left, when Glinda had been missing her best friend, and Nessa missing her sister. But after she became the governor of munchkin land, their different duties led them to grow apart. Later she had heard truly alarming stories about how the younger Thropp put her new found power to use. But Glinda, of all people, knew that you could never be sure how much the stories represented life, and nevertheless, wether Nessa as she was at the time of her death deserved it or not, Glinda wanted to give her this grave, to remember the person who was her friend and because she knew that if it wasn’t for her own stupid anger, Nessa would likely still be alive.

 

She turned to the second stone and summoned forth her magic again.

 

F. T. she wrote.

 

Fiyero. The man who, a few days ago, she had been planning to marry. She now knows that would have been a mistake, he was not in love with her and never could be, and she must’ve been blind not to see it. Blind or duping herself into not seeing anything that did not fit in her stupid life plan.

 

She lay her hand on the stone. She was no longer even sure if _she_ was in love with _him_. But she _did_ love him. He was a good person underneath that careless attitude and she felt sorry he never felt comfortable sharing that side of himself with her.

 

She turned to the last grave. Let her magic work one more time.

 

‘ _Elphie’_

 

She felt the tears that had been slowly falling since she got here start to flow faster as she looked at her best friend’s name on the cold grey stone. She felt confident that no one would connect the nickname to ‘the Wicked Witch of the West’.

 

Elphaba. Her best friend. A girl who had always done what she believed was right, and it killed her. 

 

‘Why is the world so unfair?’ she wondered. In a fair world, for fighting for what was right, no matter what was thought of her, Elphaba would’ve eventually have been recognised as the good person she was, instead of dying young as she did in this cruel reality. Glinda on the other hand, had chosen conformity and avoided thinking about anything important, for fear the conclusions she would come to would get in the way of her comfortably simple world view. In a fair world, the people would have come to see how fake she was, and maybe even she should have been the one who died. Truthfully she doubts even she deserved that, but if it had been her, she would have been paying for her greed and cowardice, instead of Elphaba paying for other people’s close mindedness.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the cold morning air. “You saved me in so many ways, made me a better person, made me a _decent_ person even, and I couldn’t ever save you from anything.”

 

“I wish you hadn’t made me promise not to clear your name. You deserve better than this. Though maybe I’m just being selfish again. It hurts to hear people talking about you like this.”

 

She pulled several flowers out of her cloak and laid them down one by one on the cold stones.

 

She sat there for sometime more, though she could not say how long. But eventually she stood, knowing she had to return to the work Elphaba had entrusted her with. “I won’t fail you,” she whispered. “Any of you,” she added looking at Fiyero’s stone.

 

She summoned her bubble and let it float her back towards the city, leaving behind the three lone graves, each with a single white lily lying on them.

 


End file.
